The truth is, if you asked me to design a home theater system without regard to market pressures or consumer expectations, the result would look a lot like the Arcam Solo Movie 5.1 DVD receiver. This British firm's slim, stylish design is a legitimately high-end system masquerading as a single, simple, easy-to-use component.
With very few exceptions, DVD receivers exist only as the electronics halves of price-driven home-theater-in-a-box systems. But Arcam's is another case altogether, delivering such features as upscaled 1080i DVD video, high-resolution SACD and DVD-Audio multichannel playback, high-tech five-channel power, and a good deal more.
Arcam's design is simply finished but with careful metalwork and deceptive heft that let you know this is no cheapie. Since disc playback is already built in, inputs are limited to just a pair of external audio/video sources — say, a set-top box or DVR and a game console, both accommodated with HDMI, component-, and composite-video inputs. There are no S-video jacks at all, and no multichannel analog audio inputs, so an external source such as a Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD player will be limited to bitstream Dolby Digital or DTS audio. And since the Arcam's video scaler operates only on its internal DVD player, the video from an external source will be displayed as it's received, including 1080p if the TV accepts it. There's an onboard FM/AM tuner but no Sirius or XM radio option.
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The Short Form
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| Price $3,249 / audiophilesystems.com / 317-841-4100 |
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Snapshot
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| Truly high-end sound and picture from an elegant, delightfully compact component — at a price. |
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Plus
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| •Gorgeous, both in the flesh and onscreen •Top-shelf sound •Very good DVD images •DVD-receiver combo saves shelf space |
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Minus
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| •No video scaling of external sources or transcoding of video signals •No analog multichannel inputs •Remote's ergonomics could be better |
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Key Features
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| •Slim-profile DVD/receiver combo •50 watts x 5 channels •Inputs: 2 HDMI, 2 component-/composite-video; IR in (2-zone); 12-volt trigger; RS-232; port for optional iPod dock or cable •Outputs: HDMI, component-video, composite-video, IR, 5 analog preouts •FM/AM tuner with 30 presets, RDS •17.3 x 3.1 x 14 in; 23 lb |
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Test Bench
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| The Solo Movie 5.1 measured well in almost all regards. Power was generous for a 50-watt x 5 design, and it had no trouble producing 71 watts with all channels driven. Noise and distortion were excellent on the digital-input tests (stereo PCM and Dolby Digital) but didn't improve much with 96-kHz/24-bit PCM sources. With the Arcam's merely average analog-input (stereo) noise performance, this suggests that its analog output circuits are the limiting factor here. Full Lab Results |
Setup for the Solo Movie was a snap. After connecting my usual satellite speakers and subwoofer, I followed Arcam's clear, elegantly produced manual to the setup screen. Wow! The onscreen displays are gorgeous, with sharp graphics of a visual standard rarely equaled even among flagship receivers, displayed in whatever resolution you set over HDMI (or in 480p if viewed via the component output). Since the Arcam includes DVD video scaling, setup incorporates output-resolution choices of 720p and 1080i — and, unusually, 768p (1,366 x 768), which could be handy with a plasma or LCD TV whose pixel-for-pixel native resolution matches this. DVD resolution from the component output remains at 480p (or 480i), though external component (or HDMI) sources pass through in whatever format they originate in. As usual with upconverting DVD players, only the HDMI output enjoys upscaling, so owners of non-HDMI screens may feel shortchanged.
The Arcam doesn't transcode video, so signals are available only in the format (composite, component, or HDMI) in which they arrive at the receiver. That means you can't hook up an external source to the component inputs and then view it on the HDMI output. So if your set-top box, say, lacks HDMI, you'd normally want to run parallel HDMI and component-video hookups between the Solo Movie and your screen and then switch TV inputs as needed. But there's a catch: The Arcam shuts off its component output when it has a live connection on its HDMI output, and vice versa. This limits you in practical terms to an all-component or all-HDMI setup, at least for gear connected through the receiver.
Audio setup was strictly manual — the Arcam lacks the auto-calibration routine found on many recent A/V receivers — but it was easy and accurate thanks to the stunning menus and logical layout.
MUSIC & MOVIES
Listening to plain ol' stereo quickly demonstrated the Solo Movie's native quality level: very high. Good discs sounded crisp and punchy but with the roundness to instruments and the lusciousness of space that require top-shelf amplification to reproduce. Since the Arcam is an SACD (and DVD-A) player as well, I quickly moved on to multichannel stuff, such as a new reissue of Rebecca Pidgeon's 1994 debut, The Raven, from audiophile label Chesky. This classic's unpolished but preternaturally lifelike room sound came blooming from my speakers with much the same stunning spaciousness I have heard from high-end separates. Pidgeon's well-modulated alto had rigorous definition and detail, as did the various acoustic instruments employed to complement it. A Solo Movie bonus is the attractive navigation menu it puts up on the video screen, which lets you select or program tracks (via artist, title, and track names, where they're encoded) and gain access to any disc extras.
External video sources appeared unchanged by a trip through the Solo Movie, and its own DVD video looked outstanding. I spent time comparing the Solo Movie's 480p on component video to its 720p and 1080i HDMI, via Rob Marshall's authenticity-challenged but visually stunning Memoirs of a Geisha. I was hard-pressed to see real distinctions but ultimately settled on 720p for my setup: It seemed to show film grain a bit more naturally and to transmit a richer, more finely graded color range. But these were tiny shades of difference in any event.
Arcam also offers the de rigueur optional iPod dock ($285), which I tried. With the dock enabled via the Solo Movie's menu system, it dutifully streamed audio from an iPod nano, displaying metadata on the Solo's front panel and responding to commands for music-selection and transport moves. Unfortunately, Arcam's "rDock" doesn't deliver metadata to the video screen, which would be a lot more legible from across the room than the Solo's front panel. But the dock's S-video and composite outputs do offer onscreen viewing of iPod photos or video. (Also available from Arcam is a somewhat cheaper rCable, which offers all the same functionality as the rDock.)
ERGONOMICS
Okay, it should be clear that I liked Arcam's design a lot, but it ain't perfect. The handsome remote is simple, with intelligently laid-out controls, and for the most part it's easy to use. But its sexy blue-on-silver key illumination is ergonomically less than brilliant; in fact, I found it simply unreadable, in dark or light conditions, without glasses.
And of course, the Solo Movie wouldn't be British without a couple of quirks. A minor one is that onscreen display of DVD chapter/time/title data requires a "shift-Info" remote key sequence — cumbersome for so often-used a feature. (I tend to check about every 90 seconds to see how much longer Hollywood plans to make me suffer.) And on a few occasions, the Solo Movie hiccupped when switching between an external source and its internal player as it played an audio disc, displaying only half of the disc-info video screen on its graphic interface. (Re-switching always corrected the problem.)
BOTTOM LINE
Most of us don't use much more than the Volume, Open/Close, and Play commands with any regularity. In that light, and with its quirks aside, the Arcam Solo Movie 5.1 DVD receiver is a magnificent simplification. It delivers the sound and the video of an honest high-end home theater, in a European-sized helping. And it does so with elegance both visual and operational, along with a savings in shelf space. This all comes at a price, of course. But its combination of looks, function, simplicity, and performance is one that many design-conscious buyers should happily embrace.
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